Comic Con 09: Preview Night
Preview Night
So now I will impart upon all of you younglings the dark and frightening tale of the madness that is San Diego’s Comic Con.
I chose to attend this event for similar reasons that I chose to attend the American Idol auditions when I was in San Francisco; for the experience. I figure that if I have a good time, I can made this a recurring vacation for myself and if not, I’ll at least be able to say that I’d gone once in my life.
After the long drive down south, during which I had to beg and plead with my car to make it through even the most minor of hills, I finally arrived. Since this is my first con, I come in relatively inexperienced, armed only with the knowledge that I can scrounge up on the internet and the advice of a few friends and coworkers who have gone to the con in years prior. Thankfully, I also have a lifetime of planning that comes from being the son of a mildly anally retentive mother who has been a teacher her whole life, so planning and preparation are in my blood, though skillful execution is still something I’m working on.
After arriving at my hotel, which was a fair distance from the con itself, I began the walk to the nearest shuttle stop, which according to Google’s new “You’re walking? Really?” maps feature, should take me about forty minutes to get to. I made it there in about thirty minutes, though I sacrificed time for a sweat-laced brow.
In line, I took the advice of several people and began a conversation with one of the other people in line for the shuttle, since anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of your con experience is spent in lines. It was a mother and son from Spokane, who had made the rather “spendy”, their word, not mine, trip as part of the son’s high school graduation gift. The flights alone had cost over a thousand dollars, which is all before the hotel and any potential souvenirs.
According to the schedule, the shuttles were supposed to arrive every 20-30 minutes, but we learned that the reason that the bus was delayed over an hour was because in addition to the tens of thousands of people attending the preview night (an estimated 30,000, according to a staffer I spoke to) there was also a Padres game that evening, making an already crowded downtown even more so. The shuttle ride to the convention center took over an hour, and while it was, at times, excruciating, it was also a nice way to see downtown San Diego in the surrounding harbor.
After the shuttle ride, we arrived upon the convention hall, which gave me a very “that’s no moon, it’s the convention hall” moment, though the outer design is something more akin to the design of the Cylon Resurrection Ship from Battlestar Galactica. To say that the hall was crowded would be an understatement, to be sure. While there are hundreds of employees and volunteers running around to help people, it can all be a little overwhelming for a newcomer, especially since you often unexpectedly find yourself in a line without always knowing what that line might be for.
After entering one line incorrectly, I found myself in the correct line to pick up my badge for the con, which is what allows you access into all of the panels and the gargantuan exhibit hall.
On preview night, the exhibit hall, which is something of a pop culture clusterfuck, especially since in more recent years major Hollywood movie and television studios have been more aware of how powerful devoted masses of nerds are and that their dollars are just as profitable, if not more so, than anyone else’s. There were a few exclusive items that I was looking for, but I figured that if people were waiting in line for over an hour to get into the Warner Brothers or Paramount booths for a bag, that it wasn’t really worth it to make any sort of attempt on purchases on my first day, so I attempted, feebly, to make my way through and see what was what.
There were screens everywhere, displaying footage from upcoming films and television series and posters and tee shirts with the faces and images of just about every science fiction movie, television, show, or comic that I had ever heard of, and many of which I hadn’t. I also learned rather quickly that when pitted against men over six foot dressed as Cobra Commander, Boba Fett or something completely indescribable, that I, at only 5’6”, fell that Sisyphus had nothing on me. I was bumped and pushed left and right, and all the while becoming increasingly more sweaty, and I was unaware whether or not the sweat was my own or that of strangers, which is just as horrifying as it sounds.
Since I will be a slave to the shuttle for the duration of my stay here, and since the shuttle only ran until seven on the preview night, and I still had a half an hour walk to the hotel after that. I left with nothing but a much better understanding of the enormity of the event, and a will to wake up incredibly early tomorrow to hopefully start a wonderful, if not, very interesting experience at comic con.
enjoy.
So now I will impart upon all of you younglings the dark and frightening tale of the madness that is San Diego’s Comic Con.
I chose to attend this event for similar reasons that I chose to attend the American Idol auditions when I was in San Francisco; for the experience. I figure that if I have a good time, I can made this a recurring vacation for myself and if not, I’ll at least be able to say that I’d gone once in my life.
After the long drive down south, during which I had to beg and plead with my car to make it through even the most minor of hills, I finally arrived. Since this is my first con, I come in relatively inexperienced, armed only with the knowledge that I can scrounge up on the internet and the advice of a few friends and coworkers who have gone to the con in years prior. Thankfully, I also have a lifetime of planning that comes from being the son of a mildly anally retentive mother who has been a teacher her whole life, so planning and preparation are in my blood, though skillful execution is still something I’m working on.
After arriving at my hotel, which was a fair distance from the con itself, I began the walk to the nearest shuttle stop, which according to Google’s new “You’re walking? Really?” maps feature, should take me about forty minutes to get to. I made it there in about thirty minutes, though I sacrificed time for a sweat-laced brow.
In line, I took the advice of several people and began a conversation with one of the other people in line for the shuttle, since anywhere from sixty to eighty percent of your con experience is spent in lines. It was a mother and son from Spokane, who had made the rather “spendy”, their word, not mine, trip as part of the son’s high school graduation gift. The flights alone had cost over a thousand dollars, which is all before the hotel and any potential souvenirs.
According to the schedule, the shuttles were supposed to arrive every 20-30 minutes, but we learned that the reason that the bus was delayed over an hour was because in addition to the tens of thousands of people attending the preview night (an estimated 30,000, according to a staffer I spoke to) there was also a Padres game that evening, making an already crowded downtown even more so. The shuttle ride to the convention center took over an hour, and while it was, at times, excruciating, it was also a nice way to see downtown San Diego in the surrounding harbor.
After the shuttle ride, we arrived upon the convention hall, which gave me a very “that’s no moon, it’s the convention hall” moment, though the outer design is something more akin to the design of the Cylon Resurrection Ship from Battlestar Galactica. To say that the hall was crowded would be an understatement, to be sure. While there are hundreds of employees and volunteers running around to help people, it can all be a little overwhelming for a newcomer, especially since you often unexpectedly find yourself in a line without always knowing what that line might be for.
After entering one line incorrectly, I found myself in the correct line to pick up my badge for the con, which is what allows you access into all of the panels and the gargantuan exhibit hall.
On preview night, the exhibit hall, which is something of a pop culture clusterfuck, especially since in more recent years major Hollywood movie and television studios have been more aware of how powerful devoted masses of nerds are and that their dollars are just as profitable, if not more so, than anyone else’s. There were a few exclusive items that I was looking for, but I figured that if people were waiting in line for over an hour to get into the Warner Brothers or Paramount booths for a bag, that it wasn’t really worth it to make any sort of attempt on purchases on my first day, so I attempted, feebly, to make my way through and see what was what.
There were screens everywhere, displaying footage from upcoming films and television series and posters and tee shirts with the faces and images of just about every science fiction movie, television, show, or comic that I had ever heard of, and many of which I hadn’t. I also learned rather quickly that when pitted against men over six foot dressed as Cobra Commander, Boba Fett or something completely indescribable, that I, at only 5’6”, fell that Sisyphus had nothing on me. I was bumped and pushed left and right, and all the while becoming increasingly more sweaty, and I was unaware whether or not the sweat was my own or that of strangers, which is just as horrifying as it sounds.
Since I will be a slave to the shuttle for the duration of my stay here, and since the shuttle only ran until seven on the preview night, and I still had a half an hour walk to the hotel after that. I left with nothing but a much better understanding of the enormity of the event, and a will to wake up incredibly early tomorrow to hopefully start a wonderful, if not, very interesting experience at comic con.
enjoy.